Sunday, February 16, 2014

Ottolenghi's Clementine and Almond Syrup Cake With Chocolate Glaze

Today is
my beloved grandmother’s 100th birthday!!! Yes, you read that correctly, and while I’ve never had the
opportunity to wish anyone a “happy 100th” before, I couldn’t be
more delighted to say it to my extraordinary grandma today. In honor of this major milestone, I’m
sharing the Clementine Almond Cake with Chocolate Glaze I recently made for her.

On my
family visit in California last month, we had an early celebration exactly one
month before Grandma hit this remarkable triple-digit age.I needed an easy but special cake recipe for her, for I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could on that last day
of my trip. I wanted to talk with her, looking at photos together and playing my violin
for her rather than slaving away in the kitchen making some elaborate
creation.This Clementine Almond
Cake from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook perfectly fit the bill.

As
Grandma herself described it after the first bite, “It’s worth living to nearly
one hundred to have a cake like this!” This cake
may be only a single layer in form, but you definitely taste multiple layers of
flavor with each bite.Grated
clementine zest infuses the almond-flour cake with fragrant citrus, while
clementine syrup poured over the still-warm cake adds another level of edible
sunshine.

I’ve always loved the combination of orange and chocolate. A shiny bittersweet chocolate glaze contrasts beautifully with the citrus sweetness, not to mention adding a whole new level of festivity to the cake.

My grandmother has been an enormous inspiration to me over the years. A schoolteacher-turned-photographer, Grandma has an insatiable lifelong curiosity about the world and a genuine interest in other people. Up until very recently, she traveled the globe on photography-oriented trips to far-flung places like Kenya, Thailand, Burma and Iceland. Her incredible eye for beauty and quest for learning led her to create fascinating travelogue shows about her various travels that she’s presented throughout her local community. She also created her own series of note cards under the name “To Share Beauty”, and these gorgeous photos of roses and other flowers have always filled me with joy.

I was
fortunate enough to have Grandma nearby as I grew up, and she was always
my big cheerleader while sharing in many of the significant milestones in my life.It was she who first realized that my memory was highly unusual and operating very differently from everyone else’s,
but she never made me feel freakish for it and only encouraged me to keep
exploring it.After I moved away
for college, we had regular breakfast dates whenever I returned home for a
family visit, and these lively conversations always included a discussion about
our various life goals.You have
to admire someone in her early nineties whose goals included taking classes at the
Apple Store so she could be more proficient using her computer, as well as
going back to Kenya to photograph the lions—for a second time!

But one
of our breakfasts a few years ago really stood out more than usual.“You know, my dear, at my age I don’t necessarily have as many future goals as you do right now,” she said. “But I suppose if there’s one thing I’m focusing on, it’s that
I don’t want to spend the last years of my life being bitter about anything. I
have so much to be grateful for, and I want to focus on that.”

On Grandma's birthday in 2002

I think
this admirable attitude—along with her genuine curiosity and natural generosity
of spirit—has kept her alive and well all the way to the century-mark, and it
is a perspective I’ve definitely tried to adopt in my own life as well.I am full of joy and thanksgiving
thinking of her, today especially. While I can’t actually be in California with her today, I
may have to make another clementine cake to celebrate her amazing life.

The
original Ottolenghi recipe has the chocolate glaze as optional, but I think
it’s an essential component of the cake!I’ve made this with Bob’s Red Mill almond meal (excellent but expensive)
and also with Trader Joe’s almond meal (good but not as snowy white and
finely-textured as the Bob’s Red Mill version). If you can’t find almond flour,
you can make your own by grinding blanched slivered almonds in a food processor
with some of the all-purpose flour used in this recipe.You’ll want to process it till the
almonds are ground as finely as possible, and adding a bit of flour will make
sure that it doesn’t turn into almond butter.

For the
cake:

4 large
clementines

1 lemon

1- ½ cups
granulated sugar

14
tablespoons butter, at room temperature

2- ½ cups
almond flour or almond meal, divided

5 large
eggs, at room temperature

¾ cup + 1
tablespoon all-purpose flour, sifted

Pinch of
salt

For the
syrup:

The juice
from the clementines and lemon (measuring ¾ cup juice)

6
tablespoons sugar

For the
glaze:

5 ounces
bittersweet chocolate, chopped

6
tablespoons unsalted butter, diced

2- ½ teaspoons
honey

1- ½
teaspoons cognac (you can also use brandy, bourbon or rum)

Make the
cake:

Preheat
the oven to 350°F.Butter the
bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan, and then line the pan with a
circle of parchment paper cut to fit exactly.

Grate the
zest of the clementines and lemon, reserving the fruit for later.Combine the citrus zests and sugar in a
food processor and pulse several times to combine.(If you don’t have a food processor you can skip this step,
but this really releases the fragrant citrus oils of the fruit and infuses your
cake with a brighter flavor.)

In a
large mixing bowl, beat the citrus zest/sugar and softened butter together
using an electric mixer.Beat till
the mixture is smooth and well combined, but don’t overwork it or else you’ll
beat too much air into the cake.Mix in half of the almond flour.Add the eggs one at a time, beating till combined and scraping down the
sides after each addition.Add the
remaining almond flour, the all-purpose flour and salt, beating till mixture is
well combined and smooth.

Pour the
batter into the prepared pan and smooth down the top with a spatula so it will
bake evenly.(The batter will be
extremely thick.)Bake until the
cake is nicely golden brown and a tester inserted into the center of the cake
comes out clean, about 40-50 minutes.(The original recipe specifies 50 minutes baking time but I found that
my cake was done at 40 minutes.Start checking at 40 minutes so you don’t overcook it, though you may
need to bake yours a little longer, depending on how hot your oven runs.)

Make the syrup:

Towards
the end of the baking time, squeeze the juice from the zested clementines and lemon to
measure about ¾ cup of juice.Combine the citrus juices and 6 tablespoons sugar in a small heavy
saucepan over medium-high heat.Stir until sugar dissolves and bring to a boil.Let the syrup boil for a minute and
then remove from heat.

When the
cake comes out of the oven, immediately brush the hot clementine syrup over the
cake, letting it all absorb.Allow
the cake to cool completely in the springform pan on a cooling rack.

When the
cake has fully cooled, run a thin knife around the edge of the cake and release
the sides of the springform.Peel
off the parchment paper and transfer to a serving platter.(I am embarrassed to admit the number
of times I’ve forgotten to remove the parchment from the bottom of the cake
before serving it!)

Make the
glaze:

Combine the chopped chocolate and butter in a small heatproof bowl
set in a skillet filled with an inch of barely simmering water.(You can also do this using a double
boiler.) Stir over medium-low heat till the chocolate and butter have melted
together.Remove from heat and
wipe off the bottom of the bowl.Stir in the honey and cognac till thoroughly mixed in and the glaze is
shiny.

Cut four
thin strips of wax paper and arrange under the edges of the cake to keep your
serving platter clean as you glaze the cake.Pour the warm glaze over the cake, allowing the extra to
drip down the sides.Let the glaze
set for at least an hour, then remove the wax paper strips before serving.

Thank you, Cenovia! I'm happy to share large doses of joy, whether it be in clementine/chocolate form or in major appreciation for my loved ones. And I think you'd agree that this cake is definitely worthy of being shared with the people you love and care about!